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With the human malware floating around the world, I've had more time to spend just lounging around at home, more of paying around with the stuff I have. Not to say that I haven't been doing that.
After recently upgrading my main PC build, I've used the old spare parts to build me a home server. And that just basically opened a new world to me alongside tinkering a Raspberry Pi 3B.
I plan to write everything in detail as separate posts. For now, I want to show just the general setup of my network.
Main PC
As mentioned I've updated a few things on my main build, which is the case, PSU and cooler. I made a few upgrades earlier this year too, so basically I've made an entirely new rig.
- Motherboard: Asus B450-I
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3700X
- CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 2
- RAM: Corsair Dominator low profile (2 x 16GB)
- SSD: Kingston A2000 (1TB), Crucial P1 (500GB), Crucial MX500 (500GB)
- Video Card: NVIDIA RTX 2080 Founders Edition
- Power Supply: Corsair SF600 Platinum
- Case: Cooler Master NR200
- Case Fans: Arctic P12
I really had fun building with this and can't wait to get more into detail. This PC is my main gaming, content creation, and content consumption device on Windows 10 and while it packs a lot of punch, stays silent all the time. Worth!
Server/NAS PC
With all the unused parts that I kept spare, like my old MSI GTX 970 collecting dust inside its box, I thought of just assembling them as another PC. Initially, I was thinking of selling the parts, but with how computer parts kept progressing, the value was just going down. And for the last few weeks, I've been doing my research on why I need one. Alas, I did end up putting one up.
- Motherboard: Gigabyte H97N-Wifi
- CPU: Intel Zeon E3-1241 v3
- CPU Cooler: Noctua L9i
- RAM: Kingston Value RAM (2 x 8GB)
- Drives:
- Parity: None (I really need to add one soon)
- Array: WD White (Shucked from WD Elements) 8TB
- Array: WD Blue (From the old main build) 1TB
- Cache: Samsung 860 250GB
- Video Card: MSI GTX 970 Twin Frozr
- Power Supply: Silverstone Strider 550W 80Plus Gold
- Case: Fractal Design Node 304
- Case Fans: Stock case fans
For this computer, I enjoyed the software side of setting it up. I'm currently using UnRaid, and playing with it has been a blast. The things I'm running on it requires a long separate post. I'm using it as general media and document storage with a few other things on the side.
RPi
The Raspberry Pi 3B+ that I've been tinkering and playing with for the past few months is what convinced me to build a separate server computer. And while this thing is really small, I would still classify it as a machine.
This tiny single board computer (SBC) powers my network-wide ad blocking solution (Pi-hole with unbound), and also HomeBridge that unifies my smart home devices to be compatible with Apple's HomeKit.
It sips a really small amount of energy, and just blocking all the ads out of everyone who is connected to my network is a big win.
Router
Of course it wouldn't be a network without something to connect it all together. I currently have an Asus RT-AC68U, which is definitely by no means a slouch. But I've been reading so much into enterprise networking, that I'm convincing myself that I need to switch to a Ubiquiti solution. There's no rush, but the urge is real. And I'd imagine the transition process will be a pain. So yeah, it does the job for me with no complaints at all.
Side Note
Of course the phones, tablets, and laptops are different devices to mention. I could go on and on writing on this list, but let's just leave this for now. If you're really curious though, leave me a message and maybe I'll go a bit further.
